How to improve your recruitment with these helpful tools

Expert Insights

01/01/2020

By Gurvinder Singh, TechRank

Over many years of recruiting tech candidates, I’ve found a number of tools that have helped recruit the right tech person for the right tech job. I hope they’ll help you find your perfect hires.

Writing the Perfect Job Description and Advert

If you want to get the best people excited, you need a great job description and an enticing ad.

1. Hemingway App[i]

For writing clear and concise content. It’ll help cut out needless words and highlight overly complex sentences. http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

2. Grammarly[ii]

For spellchecking and ensuring your grammar is spot on. https://www.grammarly.com/

3. Visuwords[iii]

Keeps you from using the same words repeatedly in sentences or paragraphs by offering alternatives. https://visuwords.com/

Using Job Aggregators

Job aggregation sites gather together jobs from across multiple job boards, careers sites and vacancies pages. Posting your vacancy onto a site, such as Indeed.co.uk[iv] will significantly improve your chances of attracting great candidates, looking for their next challenge.

Of the 575 million profiles on LinkedIn 260 million are active at least once a month and 40% of those use LinkedIn at least weekly.

LinkedIn provides you with the opportunity both to advertise job vacancies and to proactively search for people with suitable skills and attributes.

When searching, filters such as Country and Current Employer and using Boolean search criteria, you will help cut down the list of potential candidates. With paid membership, the search filters available to you increases to further reduce the list.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

So, you have a list of candidates, how do you log all the information about them, so you can make the right decision? Applicant tracking systems, such as Bullhorn[v], can help you. https://www.bullhorn.com/products/applicant-tracking-system/

Think of applicant tracking systems as your recruitment CRM. Recruitment isn’t simple. Legislation designed to protect both the candidates, and the company, has to be adhered to and you have to be able to justify decisions.

Applicant tracking systems will speed up the process and ensure you never miss a candidate or conversation with them as e.g. interview times and notes from conversations can all be recorded. Some, including Bullhorn, integrate with LinkedIn to help with the activity described above.

Video Interviewing Tools

With many jobs requiring multiple interviews for some people, arranging face time will elongate the process. If your business is one of the rapidly-growing number of remote only businesses, you may not even have an office for them to come to.

Video interviewing tools mean you take away much of that delay. Products such as VidCruiter[vi], Breezy HR[vii] and Spark Hire[viii] allow you to book interview times, record the video (for playback later and to meet legislative demands) and even check references. All of which cuts costs and makes everyone’s life just a little easier.

https://vidcruiter.com/

https://www.sparkhire.com/

https://breezy.hr/

Recruitment Assessment Tools

When recruiting to fill a technical vacancy, it’s vital that the candidates have the core set of skills you are looking for. However, more and more organisations are looking at the “softer” skills and traits to help them choose the perfect person. Personality, judgement aptitude and cultural fit are all important. Just having the right technical skills does not guarantee they will be the right person for you. That’s where tools such as Saberr[ix], Berke[x] and Athena Assessment[xi] will help.

You may be better off finding someone who is the right fit and then training them to fill any gaps in their technical knowledge – as long as you know, in advance, where those technical gaps are.

https://www.saberr.com/base

https://www.berkeassessment.com/features

http://www.athenaq.com/

Candidate Testing Tools

How can you assess their technical skills and identify any gaps? This is where candidate testing tools come in. There are many variations available. Some are straightforward skills testers: do the candidates have the exact skills you need. Others take a slightly different approach, looking at the candidates’ abilities to think logically and laterally. Scenario testing, so to speak.

Having an accurate assessment of the skills your candidates really possess, as opposed to what they claim to be able to do, is key to making the right choice. Of course, there are also people, with a strong set of skills, who struggle to sell themselves (particularly tech staff). Check out tools like TechRank if you want to know what tech skills your candidate has. This will also help you see beyond a poor interview performance.

I hope these types of tools will help you find the candidates you need as smoothly and quickly as possible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gurvinder Singh is the co-founder of TechRank. TechRank sources, expertly tests and objectively ranks tech talent helping companies hire the best, and most capable person for the job. By testing candidates for the level of skill the position requires, businesses can make an objective decision about the person they hire to fill a vacant tech role.

Web: www.techrank.io

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techrank/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techrank.io/

Gurvinder’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurvinder-singh/

LINKS REFERRED TO IN THE ARTICLE:

[i] http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

[ii] https://www.grammarly.com/

[iii] https://visuwords.com/

[iv] https://www.indeed.co.uk/

[v] https://www.bullhorn.com/products/applicant-tracking-system/

[vi] https://vidcruiter.com/

[vii] https://breezy.hr/